In the last edition of Project EVO MR, we were at Cobb Tuning SoCal in the middle of bolting on a bunch of parts. As you may recall, we are wanting to give our EVO a nice boost but don't want to get too much beyond the basic bolt ons because we don't want to stress our SST transmission too much. We want to be able to daily drive our car with occasional track use without problems.

So far we are working on getting the AEM intake, ARC intercooler, Cosworth intake pipes, AMS downpipe, MXP exhaust and the Cobb boost control solenoid with Access port all fired up before some tuning to make it all work. How much power are we gonna make? Let's take a look and see.

Just when you thought all was lost, the MotoIQ Project Evo X MR is back on track.

As previously stated back in the November 2011 article Project Evo X GSR - Testing the K&N Cold Air Intake. "The owner", aka. ME, was fairly reluctant to venture beyond simple engine bolt-ons mainly due to concerns with the twin-clutch SST transmission and its ability to hold power. The other excuse, which I think would supersede anything else, was the fact that the project stalled because my wife and I were trying raise our one-year old daughter at the time. All we did was go to work and then come home to take care of her (and the dog)—which didn't allow a whole lot of time for hobbies. Now, let's fast forward to today, I have a little bit more free time since Mike wrote that article, my daughter is getting easier to manage, and during the hiatus I've stockpiled a bunch of awesome parts that I'd like to chronicle for MotoIQ.

In the last edition of Project EVO X, we upgraded the fuel system in anticipation of more serious mods. Well the time for more serious mods has come and we are going to see exactly what can be done to the 4B11 with bolt ons. In this go around, we are going to install some camshafts by Cosworth, Garrett's direct bolt in upgrade turbo and a tubular exhaust manifold by Full Race Motorsports.

When we last left off on Project EVO X, we had come close to maxing out the car's fuel system with our bolt ons up to this point. Since upgrading the turbo to Garrett's drop in GTX3071 is in the plans, we must first bring our fuel system up to snuff. On the EVO X this is a little more involved than earlier EVO's as the injectors we chose were not an easy drop in. Don't fear, it still was not that hard, check it out!

When we last left off with our Project Evo X, we had achieved some good results with simple bolt ons from Greddy and AMS in the form of an exhaust system and a downpipe. With some further open source ECU tuning we were then able to extract another pretty good gain from our car.

AMS Performance... No we are not talking about the knock off CDM version we are talking about the original Automotosport hailing from Chicago Illinois. Truth be told I spent some time at the AMS shop last November and began working on this article. It should have been before your eyes long ago, I should have been able to belt out a piece regaling you with their amazing records in the drag racing, power output, and time attack worlds. I should have been touting their accomplishments in the EVO and GTR worlds. SHOULD is the operative word here. The reality was that I didn't want to write THAT article. Hell every AMS article talks about their accomplishments from 8 Second Evo's and GTR's, to one of the most dominant time attack cars in US history. And while those are the things that AMS is best known for NONE of them would be possible without a key ingredient. That's right I am going to brush those things aside and focus on what makes AMS tick.... PEOPLE.

Since we opened up the back part of our exhaust with Greddy’s 85mm in diameter RS catback exhaust system, it was natural to next look for a better downpipe. After evaluating what was on the market, we decided to use the AMS Wide Mouth because of several unique design features which we felt made it stand out above the rest.

In our last edition of Project Evo X GSR, we tested the K&N Typhoon Cold Air Intake with excellent results. Since the next logical choice in the path to modding our car is to free up the exhaust, we went to our friends at Greddy to get one of their RS exhaust systems to evaluate. The Greddy RS is a new line of exhausts that are constructed much like their race only systems. The main differences in the RS exhausts are that they allow the use of the stock catalytic converter and do not feature exotic titanium in their construction.

We have a bunch of mods planned for Chris’s car, the first being a Typhoon cold air intake by K&N. The Intake worked so well that we decided to make it our first MotoIQ Certified Legit evaluation. The K&N Typhoon intake came with a dyno sheet that proudly proclaimed guaranteed power. Glancing at the dyno sheet we could see that the intake increased power by 20 hp near peak RPM. That seemed like a big gain so we had our concerns, this was a lot for just an intake, was it true or BS? We were going to find out with testing that was a little more in depth than just strapping the car to a dyno for a few quick pulls.

In the last editions of Project EVO X we worked to get our car's handling and stopping power up to world class standards and eagerly attended our first track event. However we were really disappointed when our car went tilt after just a few laps at Streets of Willow Raceway. When the SST dual clutch transmission in the EVO X MR gets too hot the engine's ECU automatically makes moves to protect the transmission and the car goes into limp mode killing all measures of speed until the temps drop. In our hot Southern California climate, this happens so fast that it’s a frustrating experience and probably not good for the transmission either.